‘Before nightfall I rode a taxi through Narita. Neon-lit restaurants and bars and dark cypress. The snow and a wind from the Sea of Japan had all but cleared the streets. Cedar temples sat beneath grey skies. Vending machines lit the wet and empty paths to their gates. I told the driver to go on to the city.’Lyrical and atmospheric. As the influence of the West falls away, an unnamed narrator drifts through the East’s floating world of non-places — chain hotels, airports, mega-cities — finalising often covert operations and deals. When he meets the enigmatic and beautiful Tien, a 21st-century floating world courtesan, he becomes involved with people and events that threaten his plan to escape life via various forms of oblivion.Evocative and sparely written, in the tradition of The Mary Smokes Boys, this is a novel where the journey becomes the story, filled with acute observation, desire and dreams. Praise for Patrick Holland’s writing:‘There is a directness and sparseness to the prose…the slow meditative tension calls to mind the dark romance of Greene’s The Quiet American.’ — Jessica Au ‘Holland is, quite simply, one of the best prose stylists working in Australia today.’ — Matthew Condon
